In 2016 , a top Facebook executive compose in an internal company memo that said Facebook may be used to ordinate terrorist attacks and that it might cause deaths from bullying , but that those effects were rationalize in the name of corporal growth .
After BuzzFeedpublished the memoon Thursday , the administrator , Andrew “ Boz ” Bosworth , VP of consumer ironware , claim that he did n’t agree with his own statements , even as he write them . “ The purpose of this mail , like many others I have written internally , was to institute to the surface issues I felt deserve more discussion with the broad company , ” he said .
The memo written by Bosworth , who joined Facebook as an engine driver in 2006 , also claimed the companionship ’s questionable information collection practices were justified in the name of “ connecting people . ”
Over the past two weeks , those pattern have caused an brouhaha internationally over the compromise of information belonging to at least 50 million users at the hand of Cambridge Analytica , a political consultancy that worked for the Trump hunting expedition and at the same time aided one “ Leave ” movement during the UK ’s 2016 EU referendum .
The presence of Mark Zuckerberg , Facebook ’s Centennial State - founding father and CEO , has been requested by Congress and by the British parliament , though Zuckerberg reportedly decline the latter ’s invitation .
Per BuzzFeed , Bosworth ’s memorandum , titled “ The Ugly , ” was posted internally at the company one sidereal day after 28 - twelvemonth - erstwhile Antonio Perkins catch his own murder on Facebook Live .
It read in part :
We talk about the good and the bad of our work often . I want to verbalise about the frightful .
We connect people .
That can be secure if they make it positivistic . possibly someone get love . Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide .
So we connect more people
That can be spoilt if they make it electronegative . perchance it be a life by let out someone to bullies . Maybe someone die in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools .
And still we tie hoi polloi .
The ugly accuracy is that we think in tie in people so deeply that anything that allows us to link up more the great unwashed more often is * de facto * just . It is perhaps the only orbit where the metrics do tell the true storey as far as we are concerned .
That is n’t something we are doing for ourselves . Or for our breed price ( ha ! ) . It is literally just what we do . We colligate multitude . Period .
That ’s why all the workplace we do in growth is justify . All the questionable link importing practices . All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friend . All of the work we do to bring more communication in . The workplace we will likely have to do in China some day . All of it .
Shortly after publication , Bosworth respond on Facebook , writing : “ I do n’t agree with the stake today and I did n’t agree with it even when I wrote it . ”
https://twitter.com/embed/status/979478961582325760
https://twitter.com/embed/status/979484226922819584
The role of the memo , Bosworth said , was to surface issues he believed deserved attending . “ Having a argumentation around hard theme like these is a critical part of our cognitive process and to do that in effect we have to be able-bodied to consider even unfit ideas if only to eliminate them . ”
In financial statement to Gizmodo , Zuckerberg wrote :
Boz is a talented loss leader who says many provocative things . This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly . We ’ve never consider the remnant justify the means . We pick out that relate the great unwashed is n’t enough by itself . We also need to work to bring people closer together . We exchange our whole mission and company focus to mull over this last year .
[ BuzzFeed ]
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